hold me. hold you

"Aging Barbie" from: Next Nature

"I know what you’re thinking, so don’t even say it. Buying that thing won’t make you happy, is what you’re thinking. Buying things never makes you happy, so why would you buy this thing? It won’t make you happy.
     But you haven’t seen this thing.
     It’s really cool. They just started making it and not many people have one yet. It does all sorts of stuff and can fit in my pocket, but it can also get bigger than that if I want it to. Plus it’s made by a company I trust to put out things that will make me happy.
     (Not that I wouldn’t consider buying this thing even if it weren’t made by a familiar company—that’s how cool this thing is—but the fact that I know and trust the company makes it even better.)
     It comes in both black and white, but I can also buy an affordable cover for it in a different color if I want. For example, if I buy it in black but decide I want it to be red today, I just buy the red cover and slide it on."
— River Clegg, Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency
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"[...] It was her curves.
     Although anatomically incorrect, Barbie was still somehow alluring. She had stunning breasts and slim hips topped off by luminous eyes and lustrous hair. More to the point, Barbie was the only woman whose naked body I could study closely without risking humiliation or punishment.
     I was probably too young to be feeling lust, but I was certainly old enough to be interested in the differences between men and women. And though Barbie didn’t define those differences—even then I knew that Barbie dolls were lacking some essential female equipment—she hinted at the possibilities and inspired a few healthy boyhood fantasies."
— Larry West, About.com
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" [...] They are an expression of purest kitsch, sentimentality, and ornamentation for its own sake. In Milan Kundera's brilliant defintion, kitsch is 'the absolute denial of shit.' These are Disney-like apps, sinister in their mendacity.
     The newly popular word for this type of design is 'skeuomorphism.' Strictly speaking it means retaining design features from earlier designs when those features previously had a specific reason for being that way, but do not any longer. A good example would be iPad synthesizer apps that include 'knobs' that you can 'turn,' or 'cables' that you can 'plug in.'"
— James Higgs, MADE BY MANY
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